Camels and travellers resting in dunes beneath a broad cloudy sky

Morocco with children.

The country is extraordinary for children. The trick is the pacing, and the pacing is the part I control.

Shorter days in the car

Children decide how a trip feels. I build family routes with shorter drives, a swimming pool in the afternoon more often than not, and a thirteenth day that breaks the long run to the Sahara with a night in Midelt so nobody spends seven hours in a car. Where the distance is still too much, we fly it.

Hands chopping tomatoes and shaping fish balls beside a tagine in a kitchen

Things they will actually remember

A night in the dunes with a fire and no wifi. Riding a camel out at sunset. Baking bread in a family kitchen in a village where nobody is a tourist. A hammam. Goats in the argan trees on the road to Essaouira. A cooking class where they are the ones cooking.

A riad courtyard with a palm tree, carved arches and decorative tilework

The practical part

Child seats fitted before you land. Family rooms and connecting rooms held early, because the good riads have very few. Food that children will eat, every day, without a negotiation. Drivers I have worked with for years, who I have watched with other people's children. Pharmacies, doctors and the nearest clinic known in advance, in every town we sleep in.

Who it suits

I have taken families with children from four to eighteen, and grandparents on the same trip as toddlers. Tell me the ages and I will tell you honestly what works and what I would leave out.